March 2, 2025

Writing a film review for an online website or blog may sound simple enough, especially for the writer who has a strong background in analyzing film plus the experience in writing film reviews. Using screenshots of scenes from the movie being reviewed is a frequent practice among many reviewers, too. Some readers may find these selected scenes to make or break a potential viewer of the movie, especially movies which have been critically acclaimed by professional film critics (think Roger Ebert or Rex Taylor Reed). But for the average film critic/reviewer who wants to add something a bit more to the movie being reviewed online, what might help set the mood for the person ready to start reading the film review? What is something that might be considered totally outside-the-box and hold the position of a hero image for a movie review?

One type of image to consider would be illustration plates often seen in old, long forgotten books which occupy space in second-hand bookstores. Such images used in a film review may seem rather unusual if not completely out of place yet can be integrated into the film review as a way of setting the stage and providing a hint of atmosphere in the movie itself. For example, the hero image of a man holding a bottle, looking ready to go off the deep end was used in the following film review is from the book "Contes et romans populaires" by Alexandre Chatrain and Émile Erckmann, and created by Émile Bayard (1837-1891):

"When psychosis sets in: A review of Maniac" 1934

Artist: Robinson, Charles, 1870-1937. From the book "The sensitive plant", by Shelley, Percy Bysshe.
London, Philadelphia: William Heinemann, J. B. Lippincott Company, 1911

Another example is the hero image from "Norway and its Glaciers, Visited in 1851" by James David Forbes, 1853 for another film review. The movie that was reviewed? "Cold Prey" 2006, a slasher movie from Norway.

Forbes also drew the vast and forbidding picture, "The Jungfrau from the glacier of Aletsch" which certainly sets the mood here, for who knows what might lay beyond that glacier being explored?

The next time you visit a second-hand bookstore and peruse the old books there, flip through the old illustration plates and consider each one. Might there be something of future use in a film review? If there is, that book could be worth purchasing and saving, for the beautiful illustration plates to be scanned and immortalized in your next online movie review.